Easy win for Germany, solid performance by England and some tough battles behind Holland and Italy. But it’s three other team that supprised everyone making it to the quater finals. First of all Colombia. Shown potential agains Ivory Coast in qualifications, shown style agains Argentina in last round but this time what they did with Brazil was absolutely amazing! ’94 World Cup winners did what they could to find a way to win but when they lost two goals in ten minutes they did not know what hit them and it was too late when they got back on the track with Zinho comeback goal.
France is not in the highest potential right know and Bulgaria has few great names on their side, so the score was not easy to predict in this one, but still what happened out ther was a total suprise. Emil Kostadinov had a game of his life and not only turned every chance into a goal but also all of them were outstandingly beautyful. Whole French team was somwhere else and they should be thankful it ended only on 5 goal difference.
Last but not least – Ireland. Doing another baby step to the final. First won with Switzerland after an own goal, then got lucky after a really strugle against Danmark and now they throw Spain out of the tournament. Team is not a pack of stars, but show as lot of heart on the field and that keeps paying off so far, will the Irish luck help them agains Germany?
Two in one becouse I did not spent that much time playing those games. Fifa 2001 was a bit disapointing. Good graphics, with sponsors on strips and smooth tekstures and all, but the game play was soooo boring. How many goals can you score with a bicycle kick anyway? I remember playing a season with Auxerre but I cant remember if I finished it. That’s all I remember so let’s just leave it that way 🙂
In 2002 the game was pretty weird. Good graphics and not bad game play, but WTF happend with the physics? You could score some really bizzare goals in that one. Using edit mode I created my own player (Yeah I did that a lot before “Be a star” or “Be a legend” became a game mode) and started in Rosenborg Trondheim winning the Norway League and becoming the top scorer. After that I sold myself to Austria and become the Rapid Vien player, again winning the league and score some serious amount of goals 😉 Then I went to Arsenal, but didn’t played that season as I got a bit borred. I’ve also try my luck i European Cups, becouse playing with Legia Warsaw was option in “EFA CUP” and I’m a huge fan.
Of course there was also a qualification campaign that I took with various nations, including Poland. So in both of this games I played about 4 regular seasons, not much as in FIFA 11 I’m already played about 10 of them, but that’s a different story…
I didn’t play much FIFA 99. I got bad reviews and at time it was relesed I was still playing a lot of FIFA 98 and World Cup 98, plus the game was not a big revolution so I decided to let it go.
Next FIFA game that really got me into it was the 2000 edition. It was revolutionary both on PC and PSX. I started with the Playstation wersion, wich had worse grafics but, the gameplay was more or less the same. I dont know why but started playing in danish league with Lyngby team. Before that I didn’t even know that such a team exist. I remember playing three or four seasons with theam, winning everything there was to win. There still was no carrer mode, so I could just played season after season. In Lyngby I didn’t made any spectacular transfers, only polish keeper Arkadiusz Onyszko and polish defender Tomasz Klos later. I can remember that my hero was Kukulski who played at Lyngby and I thought he Was polish, so I was twice happy to score with that guy.
I played a PC version about year later, after I got really disapointet with FIFA 2001 on PC. In the time there was allready a user extencion with a really nicely done Polish League, so I started playing Legia Warsaw, then I played a season with AC Milan and Real Madrid, winning Serie A and Primera Division. When playing with those two last teams I had this policy to always transfer at least one polish player, so I buy Arkadiusz Klimek to AC Milan (become top striker of the Serie A) and Robert Dymkowski to Real (was a substitution but scored a lot).
FIFA 2000 is the game that I got a really good in. I figured a sure way to score from game and free kicks and learned that 360 spin is the best way to dribble. I was not affraid to play at World Class level as it was not even that hard for me. Then I got even better after playing a lot multiplayer with my friend who also had a great skill after playing a lot with Tottenham on World Class. I whould still probably kick some ass when it comes to FIFA 2000.
I’ve been playing soccer games, both simulators and managment for a really long time. Got some great stories, great victories and painful losts on my back, but it’s 2012 and idea of writing them down came to me a little late. Trying to play the old games all over again and write a new stories is pointless. I don’t have that much time nowadays, plus it just whould not feel the same, whould not feel right.
Of course there is no comeback to the lost data, old save’s were deleted, consoles gone sold, most of the oldies don’t even work on na modern hardware. But I still got a decent memory card in my head and got some memories connected with different games, so I figured it whould be a good idea to bring them back with a “Flashback”.
These post won’t be filled with statistics, screenshots or videos. It’s just my memories, sometimes a litte rusty and overall, but at least honest 😉
So I decided to start with FIFA 98: RTWC as it was a first simulation of soccer that I played on my PC. I got it very late, but trust me it was hard convincing my mom to buy it, so only thing I could do was wait. Finally in summer of 1997, after bringing home some really decent grades from school I got my first own PC with Fifa Soccer Manager (later I will write about it) as a “starter”. Two months later FIFA 98 arrived and I got it right away.
On ma Pentium 90 with 16MB RAM, Windows 95 and no 3D support, the game was working a bit slow, but it didn’t affect a gameplay so back then I wasn’t even noticing that. Of course I started the game with a World Cup Qualification Campain playing Poland. As a player used to soccer games on NES, Neo-Geo and a little Amiga, I had to take some time to learn the new Fifa, so playing qualifications on easy level got me straight to the finals and a bit bored on that stage with easy winning. Polish squad didn’t look much as a real one with players like Warzycha, Citko, Nowak or Baluszynski. It was a time when polish national coaches were switching ofen (3 different coaches in those qualifications) and every one had diferent vision. Polish squad in FIFA 98 was at least year old (looked like they took it from Poland – Moldovia 2:1 game in atumn 1996). Still I didn’t care much, I got to play with real players, with real names in 3D, with replays, commentary and some great soundtrack and animations.
Soon I find a real fun in playing season campains with diferent clubs. There was no carrier mode back in the days, so I just played one-time adventures with diferent clubs. The one that still is in my memory was the season I played with Inter Milan. I always had the same tactic. Start with selling most of the players, leaving only biggest stars (not much of them in Inter back then) and get some cash for new guys. After that I was looking for 5 or 6 big names and turn my squad into a dream team, with no subs but still a dream team 😀 I remember having players like Suker, Beckham, Ferrara, Van der Sar, Litmanen, Roberto Carlos and few more in my Inter Milan. I was not much of a gamer back there, so I just enjoyed playing on easy and winning every game 5:0 – don’t blame me I was tweleve 😉
Later I took another qualification campaign. This time it was a bit more serious. I played on higher level and take Guatemala team. We gone from CONCACAF qual. stage to the finals and win the France World Cup. I will never forget one goal in the turnament that I’ve scored with a players ass. Yeah, you see it right, ASS. It was a lose ball in the penalty area, after oponents (I don’t remember who it was, sorry) keeper crushed with the defender and my midfielder got to it first. Instead of shoot at empty goal, I mistakenly pressed cross, and he send a long ball, meanwhile my forward who was standing in the area, turned his back to it and acted like he tried to tie his shoe, ball just hit his ass and went straight to the goal, couldn’t belive my own eyes 🙂 I had that replay for year but i got lost in action so I got no prof, but I watched it so many times, that I still have no trouble with playing it in my head.
I lost intrest in FIFA 98 for a while after geting my Playstation console but I returned later. Why? I spend some hours in the edit mode (it was great back then, why it is so lame right now?!) and created a whole Polish Ekstraklasa. Player by player, team by team, after 3 days of doing nothing but creation a got a had changed Malaysian League (how the hell it got there any way?) into Polish. After that a took control of every single team and start playing a full seasun pretending I’m a producer of League Highlights, oh what a fun it was. I didn’t played the whole season, because I got bored after few weeks 😦
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Black Managment 